Web Squared

Web 2.0 Summit 2009 is a wrap!

Thanks to all of our participants for the amazing three-day conversation. Check out the list of upcoming O'Reilly events around the world.

Last year's Web 2.0 Summit marked a pivot point for the five-year old conference. Early in the year, we recognized that the shifts in our industry mirrored the shifts in the world - and focusing only on the Web meant missing a much larger narrative.

Our conversation is no longer just about the Web. Now is the time to put the power of the Web to work—its technologies, its business models, and perhaps most importantly, its philosophies of openness, collective intelligence, and transparency.

We believe that nothing is going to get better if the world collectively hides under its desk. It's time for the Web to step up and step into its role as a platform for positive change—be it in our economy, our culture, or our society.

Last year we focused on where the Web met the world. This year, the Web is the world. And we've got a lot of work to do.

Entire industries are in the process of painful rebirth—finance and energy, to be sure, but also information technology, media and communications, healthcare, retail—nearly every major sector, in every major region of the world. And while these changes have been ongoing for more than a decade, the global financial crisis has accelerated and clarified this shift. It's the end of one era, and the beginning of another.

At the center of both the destruction and creation is the World Wide Web. For this year, we are focusing on demonstrating proofs: showing how the founding principles of Web 2.0 have been put into practice to address the world's most pressing problems.

Join us this Fall at the Westin Market Street in San Francisco for Web 2.0 Summit—be there, and get squared!